Hunter
by JWizB
Summary: The blood of the Divine shows in irregular- and deadly- ways. Can Daine resist the hunting urges inherited from Weiryn?


**A/N: Ahhhhh, my first truly serious fic. It brings me joy.  
  
I posted this for two reasons. The first is that I'm proud if it. (It's surprising how satisfying a story that occurs to you on the way home from the beach can be.) I think that what happens here is rather plausible (except for the mushy ending, because it's just too, too OOC), what with Daine being the daughter of a hunting god. The second is that I want to know if I can entertain with seriousness as well as with stupid humour. You tell me- can I? Or should I stick to toupees and song parodies?**  
  
  
  
Hunter  
  
She had heard the call of the wind. It had echoed inside of her, filling her with a tingling energy, so that she knew she had to get out. Amber eyes glittered in the moonlight; the forest beckoned with its enticing scents, of pine, of soil, of blood. It called, and she could not refuse it.  
  
Her vision of the world in grey was dimmed by the sheltering trees and swiftly-moving clouds, but sight did not matter. She sketched out the world in scent, knowing every rock, every beetle, every falling leaf. She grinned as she found again the scent of blood. A deer, young and swift and strong. It knew she stalked it, and it ran with the fire of fear in its veins.  
  
It did not have a chance.  
  
She ran through brush and saplings, barely making a sound as she pursued the deer. She could see it well now, even with her dim vision, bounding ahead of her, its liquid black eyes wide with terror. She growled in the back of her throat with pleasure and veered off to the left, curving around to block the deer's flight. It started, and she lunged, closing her teeth around its neck. It kicked, tried to run, too late.  
  
She stood over it, ripping into the soft still-warm flesh, until she had eaten all that she wanted. A pink tongue came out to run over her muzzle, and then she bolted, racing back the way she had come. Back into the great stone den, which stank of men and felt like a cold, hard prison, where she trembled and sweated and cried until she fell asleep.  
  
  
  
Numair Salmalín woke to the sun on his face. He smiled lazily and stretched, opening one eye when he didn't feel Daine lying next to him. Her side of the bed was rumpled, the sheets half-off and the blanket kicked down, as though she had been tossing and turning.  
  
"Magelet?" he called sleepily, sitting up and opening his other eye. There was no response. He shrugged- she'd probably gotten up early to help Onua with something- and rolled out of bed, searching for his breeches.  
  
A few minutes later, fully dressed and yawning broadly, he made his way to the Queen's Riders' barracks. As he'd thought, Daine was there, one hand on a pony's back as she tried to talk the stubborn animal into allowing her to saddle him. He smiled and approached the fence, his smile quickly fading as he stepped into a malodorous present left by one of Daine's charges.  
  
"A mage's life is all glory and wonder," he muttered, scraping the dung off of his boot. Daine, hearing him, jerked her head up, looking startled. She didn't relax when she saw it was him, although she smiled.  
  
"Hello, Numair," she said, ducking her head and disappearing behind the pony for a minute. When she reappeared, her face was more relaxed, but her shoulders were stiff. "Sorry I wasn't there when you woke up. I... Onua needed help."  
  
"Are the little darlings giving you trouble?" he asked innocently, leaning against the fence rails. "I'm telling you, the Riders should just let me turn all of them into ponies. Then they wouldn't have to deal this these monsters." He grinned as the pony Daine was handling snorted at him.  
  
When Daine didn't answer, he felt a twinge of worry. "Magelet?" he asked softly. Her grey-blue eyes were fixed on the horizon, and her lips were parted, as though she was about to speak. All that came out was a soft, shuddering sigh. "Are you alright?" She shook herself and looked at him again, smiling this time. She even laughed a little, but it was a self-conscious laugh. "I'm fine, Numair. I'm just... a bit tired, is all."  
  
  
  
She could hear it again. The song of the hunt, not through human weapons but by tooth and claw and long chases filled with savage joy. Her fingers buried themselves in the pony's mane as she tried to fight it.  
  
Twice now she had been caught in the call of the hunt, each time shifting into wolf shape and seeking out prey. The first time it had been a hare, desperately fleeing the wolf with the mad gleam in her eyes. The second had been the deer. And each time, once she had come back to her senses and escaped the pull of the hunt, their minds had haunted her, and their last movements had come back to her in her nightmares. But it was their eyes that she remembered most, both in the night and in the day, and it was their eyes that she wept for. Remembering, she gritted her teeth.  
  
I've been hunted, as a human and an animal, she told herself, fighting the call. I will not hunt again.  
  
  
  
That night she dreamed.  
  
The forest surrounded her, not the Royal Forest this time, as it had in her nightmares, but an infinitely older and larger forest. The trees, hardly any of them pines like those in the Royal Forest, towered far above her head, and yet bright moonlight filtered through the trees to the black- soiled ground. Only the barest breaths of wind stirred her hair. She stood alone, her bow in her hand, her quiver over her back.  
  
"Hello, daughter. Welcome to my hunting grounds." The voice came from behind her. She turned, an arrow flying to her bowstring, only to be faced with a man, one she knew well. He was muscular and of average height, but seemed tall because of the antlers that sprung from his curly hair. Emerald eyes glinted at her, their colour matching the hints of green in his tanned skin. Like her, he carried a bow. The god Weiryn of the hunt. Her father.  
  
She sighed and put the arrow away. Not because she trusted him- gods were not people any mortal could really trust- but because she knew it would do no good against him. "Hullo, Da." She glanced around. Weiryn's hunting grounds? The place did have the feel of the Divine Realms, as though each tree and smell was the real and vivid original of a dim copy in the mortal realms. "What brings me here?"  
  
He grinned. "You're here to hunt, Veralidaine." She stiffened. Thinking that it was because of the use of her full name, his grin grew wider. "As you were born to."  
  
She shook her head. "No. I don't hunt anymore, Da. You know that. I told you, remember?"  
  
A lie, whispered a part of her mind. Stubbornly she quashed it.  
  
"But you have been." Weiryn narrowed his eyes at her. "Twice within the last two weeks. I know. The badger's not the only one who watches after you, you know." He looked up at the sky. A full moon hung over the treetops. "It's a good night for a hunt. Plenty of light." Unslinging his bow from his shoulder, he held out a hand to her. "Let's go."  
  
She threw her own bow to the ground. "I won't go!" she snapped, furious at the tears that refused to go away. "All my life I've called the People my friends, and now... I don't want any of this!"  
  
The god of the hunt sighed in exasperation. "It's not a matter of liking, Daine," he said, not looking very sympathetic. Sympathy wasn't the god's strong point. "It's in your nature to want to hunt- you're my daughter, after all. If you'd just stop being foolish about your eating habits, if you'd just use your bow once in a while... But no. It has to be all fish and fowl, and never a bow in your hand." He shook his head. "If you don't hunt with a bow, your divine blood is unsatisfied, and your mortal blood is too weak to resist it. You only have two choices now, Daine- you can't go back to your old ways. Follow the path of the hunt with me, and you will become the huntress you were meant to be. Follow the path you chose, and you will become a killer." And he extended his hand again.  
  
She stared at it for a moment, then at the shadowed path leading into the forest. The song of the hunt touched her senses, promising- She shook her head violently, blocking it out as best as she could. Looking at her father again, she said, "Mortal blood isn't weak, Da. And I will not hunt with you." She looked to the sky. "I want to wake up now," she told it.  
  
Her eyes locked on the ceiling, and she pulled the blanket closer to her. I don't hear anything, she told herself. I won't hear anything. No, no, no...  
  
Next to her, Numair stirred. "Daine?" he murmured, putting his arms around her. He was soft, warm, real. She began to relax.  
  
Run and smell and taste the wind...  
  
She pulled free of him embrace. "Go to sleep, Numair," she snapped, hoping he didn't hear the quaver in her voice. "That's what I'm doing."  
  
That was, she would if she wasn't called by the hunt.  
  
  
  
The wind ruffled Numair's hair as he leant against the tower's crenellations. A strand of it blew across his face, tickling him. He ignored the annoyance. Face grave, he stared into the distance, into the golden spatter of the sunset that set the Olorun on fire, and put his chin in his hands.  
  
He had always thought of Daine as a wild thing. A beautiful and intelligent wild thing, to be sure, but there was too much wild magic in her for him to ever think of her as entirely human. It had gotten increasingly difficult to think of her as such lately.  
  
It hadn't started with anything big- she'd seemed a little restless sometimes, staying up and going for walks outside when he went to bed. He'd asked her, more than once, if something was wrong, but she'd said no. Then she'd become quiet. She'd looked distant, almost fearful, and she would continually look over her shoulder, as if hearing something behind her that no one else could. Twice he'd woken up in the middle of the night to an empty room. He wasn't the only one who noticed that something was amiss, either- Onua has asked him the day before if Daine was getting enough sleep. She seemed tired, her employer said, and irritable.  
  
"I asked her if anything was wrong," the Horsemistress said, "but she wouldn't tell me. She's hiding something, I think, Numair."  
  
He agreed. And he knew what it was.  
  
"I've trapped her," he said aloud. No one was there to hear him but the tower stones. "She's like a wild thing- I've always known that. And I trapped her."  
  
He was too old, too human. And he felt it in every particle of his being.  
  
  
  
She stared at the edge of the Royal Forest, biting her lip to keep herself from whimpering. Sweat beaded on her forehead and ran down her face.  
  
Come, huntress. Run with us. Feel the fire, taste it, be it...  
  
"Goddess help me," she whispered, clenching her fists. "Goddess, Mithros, Black God..." Ma, help.  
  
A moment later, a shadow-grey wolf ran the forest path.  
  
Blood pounded in her ears as she ran. There was little light, fading her world of grey to charcoal and black, without any lighter shades. She blended in, becoming one with the trees, the ground, the air.  
  
Well, you picked a fine time for a romp in the forest. The voice in her head was an irritating buzz, bothersome but irrelevant. I'll have you know that the Stork-Man is as worried as a mare who has lost her foal. More importantly, I am hungry. Continue this another time.  
  
She caught the heady scent of sweat on the wind, and the underlying smell of blood. Her eyes gleamed, and she ran in its direction, leaping and then jumping back as her prey aimed a kick at her head. It reared on its sharp-pawed hind legs, its eyes showing white all around.  
  
Stop it!  
  
She ignored the mind-voice, focusing in the animal. The smell of its blood drove all thoughts from her head. It kicked again. As its legs lifted, she darted beneath them, and bit into the soft stomach. It screamed, thrashing and trying to throw her off. She merely bit deeper. Its warm blood sang on her tongue as she ripped with her teeth, pulling at flesh until her prey fell, convulsing, then lying still. Her muzzle buried in its bloody remains, she began to eat.  
  
The moon, coming out briefly from behind the clouds, cast its light on her meal. She froze, her nose still inside the thing's flesh.  
  
Cloud.  
  
  
  
Numair, his face buried in his hands, sat on the edge of his bed. It was truly his bed now, and his alone, because Daine was gone. Oh, Mithros, she was gone. It was midnight, and no one had seen her since the evening. Of course, she could be anywhere. It didn't necessarily mean that she'd left him. Or run away. or been kidnapped. Or- he sternly told his mind to shut up.  
  
The door to his apartments opened. "Numair?" someone called. A woman's voice. Daine's voice.  
  
He leapt to his feet. "Magelet?"  
  
She entered the room, looking pale and horribly tired. Her tunic and breeches were dirty, covered in soil and leaves. Her hair was in much the same state.  
  
"Daine, what happened?" He reached out to take her hand. She flinched and jerked back.  
  
"Numair, I have to leave."  
  
He felt the world stop. After an eternity, it started again.  
  
"I know, magelet." His words sounded hollow. "I sort of guessed." He tried a smile. It felt like he was trying to pull his face off. "I just..." He sighed. "Is there someone else?"  
  
She didn't answer right away, but went to the window. For a moment she stared out at the forest that could be seen from it, stretching towards the end of the world. She spoke; he could barely hear her.  
  
"There's no one else."  
  
Hope flared in him. "If there isn't, then maybe-"  
  
She turned to face him, her voice harsh. "I said there's no one. That doesn't mean there's nothing." She drew a shuddering breath. "I'm Weiryn's daughter. I need to hunt, I need to taste blood, I-" Her eyes glossed. "Oh, Goddess, I killed-"  
  
"We can fix it! I kept you from becoming an animal before, I can do it again- the spell just needs strengthening!"  
  
She shook her head sadly. "No. This is different. This is who I am, don't you see?"  
  
He didn't. But he had a feeling that it didn't matter.  
  
She embraced him then, pressing her mouth against his as though she couldn't bear to let him go. He responded, knowing he was crying. She was too.  
  
Reluctantly they parted, and Daine gave him a half-smile. "I love you, Numair," she whispered. "Never forget that."  
  
He shook his head. "I never will."  
  
She turned, and disappeared from his apartments.  
  
The grey wolf ran alone through the forest. The chill morning air ran with her pained cries. 


End file.
